In this tutorial, you will set up Digger to automate terraform pull requests using Github Actions

Prerequisites

Step 1: create your Digger account

Head to ui.digger.dev and sign up using your preferred method. You should see an empty dashboard after you sign up.

Step 2: install the Digger GitHub App

Install the Digger GitHub App into your repository.
Digger GitHub App does not need access to your cloud account, it just starts jobs in your CI. All sensitive data stays in your CI job.You can also self-host Digger orchestrator with a private GiHub app and issue your own token

Step 3: Create Action Secrets with cloud credentials

In GitHub repository settings, go to Secrets and Variables - Actions. Create the following secrets:
  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID - AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY You can also use OIDC for AWS authentication.

Step 4: Create digger.yml

This file contains Digger configuration and needs to be placed at the root level of your repository. Assuming your terraform code is in the prod directory:
projects:
- name: production
  dir: prod

Step 5: Create Github Actions workflow file

Place it at .github/workflows/digger_workflow.yml (name is important!)
name: Digger Workflow

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      spec:
        required: true
      run_name:
        required: false

run-name: '${{inputs.run_name}}'

jobs:
  digger-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write      # required to merge PRs
      actions: write       # required for plan persistence
      id-token: write      # required for workload-identity-federation
      pull-requests: write # required to post PR comments
      issues: read         # required to check if PR number is an issue or not
      statuses: write      # required to validate combined PR status

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: ${{ fromJSON(github.event.inputs.spec).job_id }}
        run: echo "job id ${{ fromJSON(github.event.inputs.spec).job_id }}"
      - uses: diggerhq/digger@vLatest
        with:
          digger-spec: ${{ inputs.spec }}
          setup-aws: true
          setup-terraform: true
          terraform-version: 1.5.5
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        env:
          GITHUB_CONTEXT: ${{ toJson(github) }}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Step 6: Create a PR to verify that it works

Terraform will run an existing plan against your code. Make any change to your terraform code e.g. add a blank line. An action run should start (you can see log output in Actions). After some time you should see output of Terraform Plan added as a comment to your PR. Then you can add a comment like digger apply and shortly after apply output will be added as comment too.

Demo repositories